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Я был тем самым, с ночью кто знаком.
Я вышел в дождь, - я в дождь вошел опять,
Ушел за фонари, далек уж дом,
Грусть переулков стал я выявлять;
Мне встретился дежурный постовой, -
Прошел его, не в силах объяснять, -
Потупив взгляд, поникнув головой.
Брел дальше, вдруг раздался чей-то крик, -
Прервался.... Вздрогнув, приглушил шаг свой, -
Зов или же прощание? - в тот же миг
Часов небесных я услышал бой, -
Но временных градаций, - я постиг, -
Нет никаких у тех часов; при том
Я был тем самым, с ночью кто знаком.
Перевод В. Чистяков
JACK LONDON
(1876 - 1916)
Jack London, the famous American novelist and short-storey writer, was born in San Francisco, California on January 12, 1876. The family was very poor. When the boy was eight, he learned to read, and read everything he could get. He borrowed books from the public library and spent all his free time with a book. He began to work very early, when he was nine. He got up at three and delivered newspapers, after that he went to school. After school he delivered evening papers. On week-ends he worked as a porter at a hotel.
After graduating from a grammar school he continued working as a newspaper boy and did other jobs. His father was seriously ill at that time and Jack had to feed the family. He found work in a factory, but his wages were so low that he worked overtime. When jack was a boy he dreamed of being a sailor and now, when he had free time, he spent I near the sea. On one such day he was offered work as a sailor on board a ship going to Japan. Jack London worked on that ship for a year and in 1893 came back to San Francisco. His family was near starvation. Jack found a job at a factory, after a day at a factory he could think of nothing but sleep. It was at that period that his first short storey was published. A San Francisco newspaper offered a prize for a storey, Jack sent his short story and was awarded the first prize.
It was more and more difficult to get a job in San Francisco and Jack London marched with the army of unemployed to Washington to ask for bread and work. Then he tramped all over the United States and Canada and spent a month in prison for tramping. That month in prison helped him to understand the class struggle. He saw men go mad or beaten to death there. When London returned home, he decided to continue his education and after three month of study entered the University of California. But he spent there only a semester because his family needed his help. London found a job at a laundry and at the same time decided to try his luck in literature.
Working day and night, he wrote poetry, essays and stories. He sent them to magazines, but nothing was published. Gold was found in Alaska at that time? So London went there. He hoped to become rich enough to devote himself to literature. He worked there for a year, but didn’t find any gold. He found the heroes of his stories: strong and brave people.
In 1898 Jack London returned home and found his father dead. Again he had to take different jobs – washing windows, cleaning carpets. At the same time he continued to write and in 1898 his story “To the Man on Trail” was published and was a success.
In the next four years the writer published his northern stories “The Son of the Wolf”, “Children of the Forest”, “A Daughter of the Snows” and others, which make Jack London famous and brought him enough money to devote himself to literature.
In 1902 London visited he capital of England. He spent much time in the slums of London and later wrote one of his best books, “The People of the Abyss” (1903), where he showed a horrible picture of the poverty of English working people at that time.
The Russian Revolution of 1905 led London to better understanding of the class struggle. His works “The War of the Classes”(1905), “Revolution” (1908), “The Iron Heel”(1907) were written under the influence of the Russian Revolution.
The years 1905 – 1909 were most successful for the writer. He published “White Fang”, “The South Sea Tales”, “Martin Eden” and many other works which brought the author great fame. In “Martin Eden” he used many facts from his own life. In the last years of his life Jack London moved away from the working class. His literary works of this period were less important. He did not touch upon any social problems in them but showed the success in life of some men. (“The Little Lady of the Big House”). In 1916 Jack London died.
MARTIN EDEN
It is the story of a young, uneducated, but world-wise young man who struggles heroically to gain the affections of a young woman of "class." Martin Eden believes he will make himself worthy of Ruth Morris's love if he can educate himself and acquire the manners he has not learned as a seaman. To gain Ruth's love he must gain her respect. Martin, unable to afford a formal education, determines to educate himself, and in doing so discovers stories worth telling, stories about the life he and others have lived, stories that draw on his experiences in a class disfavored by Ruth, her brothers, parents, and their social circle.
Martin educates himself, gains Ruth's affection and love, and decides to make his living as a writer rather than a bank clerk, teacher, or lawyer. As he becomes more committed to the use of his new knowledge of language to tell stories, fictional and autobiographical, that give voice to his past as a seaman, to his education in worldly, profane matters, he develops his skills and talents.
Eden's self-education is tested when introduced to Ruth's bright, well-educated friends and teachers. Martin discovers that his knowledge holds up, that in fact, his self-education has given him a better understanding of life and politics than those who have received the formal credentials of education. Eden becomes ever more convinced that he can write and that his stories will sell, that he can make a living as a writer. He is, however, discouraged by his family, and more importantly, since Eden undertook his self-education to win Ruth Morris's love, discouraged by Ruth and her parents.
Martin tries to win Ruth's support by sharing with her what he writes, by encouraging her to use her critical intelligence to confirm for herself that his stories have value and that others will want to read them. Eden continues to write, developing an obsessive self-confidence in the face of repeated rejection of his stories by publishers.
With every hour devoted to writing, and still without an audience for his stories, Martin becomes a poor man and unacceptable to the class conscious (unconscious?) Ruth. In time, Martin is rejected by Ruth, her parents, and the socially prominent friends of her family. His stories remain unpublished.
But just when the rejection is most devastating and his future imperiled, there is a stroke of fate. One of Martin's obscure, non-fiction manuscripts, heavily philosophical, and by no means his best work, is published and wins acclaim. But by the time of its publication, he has given up writing. He is physically weak from starving himself, emotionally drained, and at the time of success, a defeated man. His defeat is so complete, and experienced so deeply, that the success does not buoy his spirits, even about writing. He submits, to now eager publishers, writings earlier rejected. He goes to dinner with socially prominent people but cannot overcome the knowledge that they are the very same people who rejected him prior to his new found public acclaim as a writer.
Martin, now publicly acclaimed, finally tells himself, they accept me now "for work already done." He is accepted by Ruth and her family, for the exact work, the exact same skills and stories, for which he had been rejected when he was poverty-stricken and unpublished. Martin knows, and cannot forget, that Ruth's love and acceptance depend on his new fame. Martin's fame is deserved, but his experience of rejection helps him see the falseness of fame. Martin knows that the absence of social recognition blinded Ruth and others in her circle to seeing what was valuable and worthwhile.
Jack London's story of Martin Eden exposes fame and the quixotic fate of artistic work (or for that matter beauty and justice) that turns on the fate of recognition. Ruth's education and knowledge, and that of her parents, and educated bothers and friends, had not prepared them to know good writing and how to value it. Ruth was able to love Martin, ultimately, only when the world confirmed what her education and class consciousness had not prepared her to accept, that the good, and the good life, is not a matter of who gets published, social acclaim, or mass acceptance (or even majority rule). The masses, the majority, society, those who get published and those who decide to publish them, are all significant benchmarks in knowing what is to be valued, who is to be honored, and to whom prizes will be conferred, but Martin Eden's story suggest caution in placing our faith in the value judgment of those who represent the establishment. Publishers decide what to publish, but publishers are no more immune from blindness and ignorance than Ruth and her family. The publishers who sought to publish Martin Eden and pay him handsomely for his stories sought the exact work they had earlier rejected. Martin Eden's despair did not prevent him from obtaining the devilish satisfaction that came from seeing publishers grovel over work that they had earlier rejected.
The moral lesson of Martin Eden's story is not that good prevails. Martin Eden did, eventually, get his work published and receive deserved acclaim. Jack London cuts the reader off from a simplistic reading of the story by having Eden set sail for a South Sea island to escape the hypocrisy in the world of his new found success. The book ends with Eden slipping quietly out of the hatch window of his suite into the dark waters as the ship sails on to its destination.
Martin Eden's fame speaks to how we judge what is good, and how society (and particular forms of class consciousness) lead to harmful mistakes in judgment about what (and who) is good. Eden's story, a story about desire, education and knowledge, poverty, class consciousness, and how one might live a good life, is in a story about ethics. Martin Eden fails ever as he succeeds. It is a failure to secure even with his commitment to and skill at writing authentic stories, of real value for real people, even a modicum acceptance that pushes Martin to continue his work. But one is saddened by the knowledge that work of value is lost because it cannot be recognized. The problem is not simply a writer even seeking an audience, but a problem each of us face as we seek others who can see our true worth.
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